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Opinion: Guest Opinions

Boulder and global warming

By Roger Burkart

Posted:
05/04/2014 01:00:00 AM MDT

On average, global temperatures have risen 1.5 degrees (F) since 1880 and will continue to rise another 3.6 degrees by 2099 according to the 2013 International Panel on Climate Change. It doesn't sound like much, so what would it mean locally?

Temperature and precipitation records for Boulder, available through NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL), provide data going back to 1893 and continuous records from 1901 covering daily, monthly, and yearly readings along with maximums, minimums, and averaged readings. Since 1901, Boulder's maximum yearly average temperature has already risen by 2.8 degrees, with a higher warming of 4.4 degrees occurring during the summer months. Still, the summer warming which averaged 0.04 degrees per year, doesn't seem like much. Our memory is short, so the cumulative change extending over multiple generations is hard to perceive. Last year's flood is probably more memorable than the wildfires of 2012 or 2002, but the trend of local and regional temperatures continues upward.

Temperature and precipitation projections for the Colorado and other states in the southwest are available through the recently released "Assessment of Climate Change in the Southwest United States" at http://swcarr.arizona.edu/. This is one of nine regional reports developed to inform the 2013 National Climate Assessment (NCA) which is conducted every four years as part of the Global Change Research Act of 1990 and is being organized and administered by the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Chapter 7 of the report focuses on future climate and projected climate extremes for the southwest region. One graph in particular shows projected warming of 3.5 degrees (F) by 2050, 6.

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6 degrees by 2070 and 9 degrees by 2099.

These numbers can be better understood if they are applied locally to the recorded daily temperatures of 2002, a year when drought dominated the news and the state experienced 14 major forest fires, burning 337,227 acres within Colorado. It was a summer when the entire state seemed to be on fire and air was choked with smoke no matter where you went. The temperatures in Boulder were not the hottest on record, ranking as the 20th warmest year since 1901, but we received only 13.88 inches of precipitation, making it the 14th driest year since 1901. It was a memorable summer but not the most extreme, certainly a good reference point. It was also the start of the pine beetle outbreak in Summit County which has now spread over the Continental Divide and into Boulder County. This ecological disaster has impacted over 3.4 million acres of forest in Colorado since 1996 and continues its relentless march towards Boulder.

In 2002 the yearly mean maximum temperature for Boulder was 66.1 degrees. That sounds comfortable, but a closer look will show that this included 53 days of 90 degrees or warmer, with 10 consecutive days of 90 or greater and 3 days of 100 or greater. We also experienced 19 days where the maximum temperature was 32 or lower. When the projected warming for the years of 2020 through 2050 is applied to the 2002 data, the number of days of 90 or greater increases to 77, with 20 days of continuous 90 degree temperatures and 14 days of 100 degrees or greater. Jump to 2099 and we will have 95 days of 90 or above, 36 consecutive days of 90 or greater, 42 days of 100 or greater, and 9 days of consecutive 100 degree days. We will also have only two days when the maximum temperature falls below freezing. As a comparison, last year Moab, Utah had 102 days of 90 or greater including 17 days that were 100 or greater.

The year 2002 brought drought, fires, watering restrictions, bone dry yards, a higher than usual number of bears searching for food in the city, and a lot of cranky people who were tired of the long summer heat and smoke. The warmest year on record, 2012, brought the loss of another 230,491 acres to wildfires, mostly along the Front Range. Are we willing to accept an ever hotter, drier and browner Boulder as an acceptable trade-off for high CO2 producing life styles?

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